Aptitude does not honour 'recommends' properly

[moopere]

I've suffered this since the early days of Gutsy development and just assumed it would get better. It didn't and with only days to go I started to get a bit worried.

Some snooping around has turned up this file:

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01Ubuntu

which needs to be deleted to return aptitude (and apt-get) to its prior, and correct, behaviour of only installing recommended packages when asked.

Hope this helps someone.

Regards,
Craig

[aamukahvi]

Well actually automatically installing recommends is the correct behaviour. This way you can have some packages as recommends of ubuntu-desktop → you won't lose ubuntu-desktop when uninstalling certain programs.

List of recommends for u-d:Recommends: apport-gtk, avahi-autoipd, bluez-cups, bluez-gnome, bluez-utils, bogofilter, brltty, brltty-x11, bug-buddy, compiz,
contact-lookup-applet, cups-pdf, deskbar-applet, discover1, displayconfig-gtk, diveintopython, ekiga, espeak, evolution,
evolution-exchange, evolution-plugins, example-content, f-spot, firefox, firefox-gnome-support, foo2zjs, gcc, gimp, gimp-print,
gnome-accessibility-themes, gnome-games, gnome-mag, gnome-orca, gnome-screensaver, gnome-user-guide, hal-cups-utils, hplip,
landscape-client, laptop-detect, libdeskbar-tracker, libgl1-mesa-dri, libnss-mdns, libpam-gnome-keyring, linux-headers-generic,
make, min12xxw, network-manager-gnome, onboard, openoffice.org, openoffice.org-evolution, openoffice.org-gnome, pidgin,
powernowd, pxljr, restricted-manager, rhythmbox, scim, scim-gtk2-immodule, scim-tables-additional, splix, tomboy, totem,
totem-mozilla, tracker, tracker-search-tool, ttf-arabeyes, ttf-arphic-uming, ttf-gentium, ttf-indic-fonts-core,
ttf-kochi-gothic, ttf-kochi-mincho, ttf-lao, ttf-malayalam-fonts, ttf-mgopen, ttf-thai-tlwg, ttf-unfonts-core, ubufox,
ubuntu-docs, wvdial, xcursor-themes, xdg-utils, xresprobe, xsane

[bapoumba]

And if you want to change it, you can run aptitude in a terminal, to get the ncurse interface > Options > Dependency handling.